Microsoft Brings Skype Closer to Unified Business Communication

By
Rob Marvin29 Jan 2016, 8:03 p.m.

Microsoft isn't hiding its concerted effort to capture all facets of the cloud-based enterprise communication and collaboration market. Look no further than the Microsoft Cloud commercials littering NFL playoff broadcasts for the company's simple message: your business should run on Microsoft software and services, and it should all be accessible from one place.

All Microsoft's services run on the company's cloud platform on the back end, soon to be rolled into the Microsoft Azure Stack hybrid cloud infrastructure, but the core value for business users is integrating all those disparate offerings—from its Skype for Business Onlinevoice over IP (VoIP) service to Office 365—into a single experience for businesses. Microsoft's recent acquisition of Event Zero's UC Commander suite is a move to make that happen sooner rather than later.

The acquisition, announced last week, will allow Microsoft to build better native management tools directly into the Office 365 administration dashboard within the Skype for Business client. The strength of the UC Commander unified communications and collaboration (UCC) platform is in diagnostic analytics, monitoring, and reporting, so in integrating the platform Microsoft will add a built-in analysis layer into Skype for Business in which users can collect and analyze call quality and other multimedia data from audio and video calls.

Skype for Business already lets users view basic call quality reports and assign Skype numbers to Office 365 users. Microsoft's goal, according to Zig Serafin, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Engineering of Skype for Business, is to give businesses an easier way to "connect on-premises deployments they manage with Office 365 services, including hybrid deployments, provisioning of phones, and other endpoints."

The UC Commander acquisition isn't the only prong of Microsoft's latest Skype-focused UCC push, though. A day after the Event Zero deal (Event Zero will continue to operate independently with its other products), Microsoft released a preview of its Skype integration for the popular collaboration tool Slack.

The new integration lets Slack users simply type "/skype" into a Slack chat to start a Skype call with that user. The video chat doesn't occur natively within the Slack app; you'll need to follow the pop-up link to the Skype web application or Skype mobile app.

Slack is a growing powerhouse in business collaboration and Microsoft knows it. Both the tech giant and the upstart platform are working toward the same unified collaboration goal, and integrating with Slack is a way for Microsoft to keep a foothold in Slack's growing business user base, even if on its face the move runs counter to funneling everyone into Skype for Business.

In a way, Skype is becoming Microsoft's unifying technology. The company continues to integrate the communication platform with not only third-party applications such as Slack, but with more granular integrations within the Office 365 suite, including a recent Outlook mobile upgrade that gives Android and iOS users the ability to schedule and join Skype calls from within an Outlook calendar.

In the larger scheme of capturing the enterprise UCC market, Skype for Business hooked deeper and deeper into Office 365 services as Microsoft's answer to competing UCC offerings such as Cisco's Unified Communications Platform. It's a collaboration fight that goes back to Cisco Jabber versus Microsoft Lync. While the war is not likely to be won anytime soon (if ever), both companies know the next battle is the one for the dominant UCC experience.

Rob was previously an editor at SD Times covering software, managing social media, and writing narrative-driven features on any offbeat story or trend he could find. He graduated from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications ... See Full Bio